


you were my brother

by millimallow



Series: the world of owa [12]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen, angsty and very religious, baaaaaaasically about what it's like to be traumatized, have a good time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 01:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17695403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millimallow/pseuds/millimallow
Summary: part 13 of the world of owa anthology, set on epiphany rock.you lie buried somewhere beyond any forgiveness.





	you were my brother

there was a time when i knew you so well.

you grew up in one of the villages in the corilid range that border murentz bres. i was a satyr, living remote in a commune somewhere in northwest pinnacle. you were a human, but it didn’t matter to me. we had lived very different lives amongst very different people, but it was okay. when i looked into your eyes, coloured the shade of bleeding-wood, i saw my brother. we had been outsiders and we were now outsiders no more. i told you of my dreams one night where my armour still gleamed by the light of a fire and you smiled at me.

how was i to know what you would do?

maybe it was my fault. you were a child- even at only a few years younger than me, squarely past 18, you thought like one. outsiders grow up differently. maybe i should have known that the burden i placed on you was too much. adventurer. partner. bard. my brother in arms, even though your arms were tattered bardic robes and mine was shining holy armour. did i not give you enough support? could you not turn to me when you needed a shoulder to cry on, or even to stand on? my mind tells me often of what i could have done to stop you. to help your ailing mind and its confusion, to wrestle the darkness away. never how i could have beaten you there; on that day at epiphany rock. but how it all could have been fine. all these years and i don’t want to have won. i want you to have won. not the one who uses you for his own deeds because he knows you, knows you have a vulnerable and confused mind that rocks from side to side.

i can’t blame you for finding faith.

you used to look me in the eyes and tell me that my faith in athena was stupid. there were no godly hands which reached from the sky and held me so as that i could be lifted away from the battles i fought. nor were there any great eyes in the sky which you could see blink for a moment, then vanish. i tried to explain these things to you; that there was no need for a physical eye when your sight was not of the body, and that my religion was not intended to save me. it was intended to help me save other people, i would die when i died, whether that was in a great battle or in my sleep with some great disease. years from our final meeting, stricken with the illness that paralyzed me, i wasn’t looking to be saved. but i knew it didn’t make much sense to you, we thought in different ways. you had your instant gratification, pleasure principle, and i had the patience that would ruin nations of people before it caught up with me once more.

that last night is always on my mind.

whenever it rains, i remember. i feel better away from the sea, and away from high places, because you were there. each time i cover myself with water it’s washing away my blood again, blood that pours from my shoulder and then my forehead as i stand in front of the friends we shared. up until that point, i believed that you were better than what you did in plain sight. you could have been joking, you and your barbed humour, until the point where i shielded inme and satafina from your magic. my body rocked and swayed with the spreading jolt and the sound became unbearable. you had held out your arm and your music and you hurt me. originally you were going to hit the two most fragile of our group, which is something i didn’t realize until a few months after the fact. it was, by all measures, a killing attempt. did you want to do it? was it just a necessity for you to get your way? you probably would never give me a straight answer, but i do wonder. maybe, when you hurt me, all your anger rendered away like wax, because i could see the peace in your eyes was that of the parched man’s first drink of water. there are no lasting injuries to my body- that would come later- but my psyche remains wounded. does that count? is it real? it’s not anymore, maybe.

now i do what you couldn’t.

only recently did i learn the full story. of you and inme, your son. i met him before i knew anything about it, and if there’s any sign that i’ve forgotten, it’s that i saw past your crimson-red hair. he was the pretty young thing of my colleague, the technological wunderkind who strayed far from home. like you did. we shared an office because my mind told me to protect them, even without saying anything. he couldn’t read, and his ta arune accent was apparent- i felt sorry for him. gave him leeway and helped him. like i did you. like i would do again. and if i feel any anger towards you now, it’s because you hurt him. you bought him into a chaotic world with your own quick-fire impulses and didn’t feel an ounce of sorrow, not even after you knew he existed, not even after i killed you and you could see what inme would have never told you otherwise. all the people who have died in this war that you kept afloat yourself, all the suffering associated with it, i carry it on my back. the beast of an unimaginable burden, carrying with them a terrible crime.

even though i did everything i could.

though my holy axe was righteous in the moment.

regardless of the comics about me,

and of the light in people’s eyes when they meet me.

i carry it with me,

because you are my brother.

 


End file.
